Implicit attitudes in prosopagnosia

• Published in: Neuropsychologia 2011-06, Vol.49 (7), p.1851-1862
• Main Authors: Knutson, Kristine M., DeTucci, Karen A., Grafman, Jordan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accidents, Traffic; Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Association; Attitude; Biological and medical sciences; Black People; Brain Injuries - psychology; Brain lesions; Discrimination, Psychological; Disorders of higher nervous function. Focal brain diseases. Central vestibular syndrome and deafness. Brain stem syndromes; Ethnicity; Executive Function; Face; Humans; Implicit attitudes; Injuries of the nervous system and the skull. Diseases due to physical agents; Intelligence Tests; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Medical sciences; Middle Aged; Nervous system (semeiology, syndromes); Neurology; Neuropsychological Tests; Organic mental disorders. Neuropsychology; Photic Stimulation; Physicians; Politics; Prosopagnosia; Prosopagnosia - psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Racial Groups; Recognition, Psychology - physiology; Sex Characteristics; Social cognition; Traumas. Diseases due to physical agents; Traumatic brain injury; White People
• ISSN: 0028-3932; 1873-3514; 1873-3514
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.03.009

► Male patient with acquired prosopagnosia tested using Implicit Association Tests. ► As expected, patient had poor ability to overtly recognize familiar faces. ► Patient showed a congruency effect on the race and celebrity IATs. ► Demonstrates retrieval of social biases even without the ability to recognize faces. We studied a male with acquired prosopagnosia using a battery of Implicit Association Tests (IATs) to investigate whether observing faces varying by social category would activate the patient's implicit social biases. We also asked him to categorize faces explicitly by race, gender, and political party. The patient, G.B., was marginally slower to categorize black compared to white faces. He showed congruency effects in the race and celebrity IATs, but not in the gender or political IATs. These results indicate that G.B. possesses an implicit social sensitivity to certain facial stimuli despite an inability to overtly recognize familiar faces. The results demonstrate that social biases can be retrieved based on facial stimuli via pathways bypassing the fusiform gyri. Thus the IAT effect can be added to the list of covert recognition effects found in prosopagnosia.